Deal of the year 2016

Thomas Muskett-Ford

20 June 2017

Latin Lawyer profiles the winners and runners-up of Latin Lawyer’s Deal of the Year Awards, shining a spotlight on the lawyers who made Latin America’s largest and most sophisticated transactions and cases happen in 2016.

A series of major political and economic developments steered Latin America’s trajectory in 2016. During his first year in office, President Maurício Macri scored a major coup by ending Argentina’s 15-year struggle with holdout creditors, opening the country to much-needed funding from the international capital markets. His election in late 2015 also heralded predictions – perhaps premature – of the left’s decline across the region. The impeachment of left-leaning Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was by far the biggest casualty in this respect. She was replaced by former vice president Michel Temer, who must now restart the country’s economy amid floundering growth, high inflation and massive corruption investigations, but allegations that Temer both received bribes and obstructed investigations that were part of the Car Wash probe have further undermined an already unpopular administration. Elsewhere in the region, Colombia’s Santos administration ended one of the world’s longest-running guerrilla insurgencies by securing a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

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